by Richard
I don’t know where she got this idea, but my wife, known to me as She Who Must Be Working, thinks that I, of all people, am a negative person. That is, she thinks I always come down, not on the glass-half-empty side, but on the who-st0le-my-glass-and-polluted-half-of-it-now-I’ve-got-to-thr0w-it-all-out side. Or something like that.
I swear I have no idea why she thinks this. Oh, all right. Maybe it’s from the previous couple of decades we’ve known each other and all the times I’ve focused on the negative. Still, I noticed myself noticing that negative stuff and decided about seven years ago (right after my heart attack, oddly enough) that I was going to be a more positive dude.
Not that I’ve been successful 100 percent of the time, but I’m getting better.
Which brings me to this: I got a marketing e-mail from Sherri Riley, founder and Chief Partnership Strategist of GLUE, Inc. and creator of the Exponential Living program (www.exponentialliving.com) – a ground-breaking initiative that helps individuals create balance among life’s key areas in ways that promote a higher standard of excellence (to quote from her e-mail). Normally I wouldn’t bother you dudes with this, but she was talking about how to remain positive and she had some pretty good points. So I thought I’d share.
1. Reflect on Positive Past Events – Not a bad idea. When we focus on things that we have already experienced in a positive fashion, we’re more likely to look for those kinds of things in the future. As you think about positive things, you train your brain to more easily spot the positive.
2. Have a Giving Heart and Spirit — This pretty much speaks for itself, but I’ll go ahead and butt in anyway. Doing the right thing, helping out the helpless. . . That sort of positive action will make us feel good about ourselves and more likely to do something positive again. Remind me to tell you about an amazing action performed by my brother-in-law, the Flying Dutchman.
3. Happy is a Choice; Contentment and Joy are Lifestyles — She is 100 percent right here, dudes. Seriously. We can’t choose what happens to us in life, but we certainly can choose how we react to it. If we react with panic and fear, our lives will be full of negativity. If we react with calm and thoughtfulness, we can have a positive life. Happiness can be up to you.
4. Tap Your Inner Courage — Not really sure what she’s going on about here in relation to positivity, but it’s still good advice. I think it was Eleanor Roosevelt who said people should do one thing every day that scares them. She wanted folks to break out of their comfort zone and learn to dare, to find strength in overcoming your fears. That’s good advice for just about anything.
I’m going to skip the fifth one because that’s basically just her going on about her own particular program that she’s pushing. I figure I’ve given her enough publicity for the day.
Although, considering how thoughtful and full of insight I found her e-mail blast, maybe I shouldn’t be so quick to dismiss her whole exponential living thing. Still, I think I’ll leave that up to you dudes.
See? That was positive. Sort of. Well, at least it wasn’t completely negative. I’m getting better.
